As for the decapitated man in the article, I wonder if he was “cooking” his own explosives from potassium nitrate. My understanding is that, after the mixture cools, the resulting crystalline explosive is almost unusable because it is so sensitive to mishandling. However, it retains some appeal to amateur bomb makers as it is an explosive that can be concocted from common household chemicals. I mention this chemical because, when I first heard an account of the 1970 incident, it was reported that they (the terrorists) were cooking a batch of this explosive and something went wrong.
As the subsequent investigation revealed, the cause was more mundane: the townhouse was loaded with dynamite.
I don’t recall what my four acquaintances were using for explosive materials, since this was over 30 years ago. For some reason I think it was black powder, but could not swear to it now.
For better or worse, it seems my neighborhood was a hotbed of teen terrorists, as there had been a long tradition of homemade bombs for about 10-15 years among the local kids. We spent a day building a dam in the drainage ditch behind our house, the centerpiece of which was a large log. The Reike brothers made some sort of bomb and blew the log about 20 feet in the air. Spattered in mud, we all melted into the bushes before the Sheriff arrived.
My brother spent the better part of an afternoon filing the powder off several boxes of sparklers, then filling the hull of a plastic USS Arizona model battleship. It went up like its namesake, but on a smaller version.
I won’t even mention what happened on “gasoline night.”
But with what we were doing, it was only a matter of time before some terrible tragedy happened. And it did.